


Fresh Paint

by theskywasblue



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11892609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: The last of the crime scene tape came down in October, and a for sale sign went up just after





	Fresh Paint

**Author's Note:**

> Basically only written for Kansouame to keep her spirits up (though can such a dark thing do that? I wonder...) 
> 
> One thing to keep in mind is that this universe (such as it is) is something still evolving, still having all it's many, many, MANY imperfections hammered out; and as such not every detail is going to line up all the time (in fact, stuff I've previously written, I've already effectively "Jossed") until I actually reach the point where I try and put everything together.
> 
> If I ever do.

The last of the crime scene tape came down in October, and a for sale sign went up just after. Blue saw it for the first time Monday morning, as he rode by on his bike on the way to school. It was like taking a hard punch, and he lost his momentum, skidding on the loose gravel at the side of the highway, veering into the grass, his worn runner catching the uneven ground and barely keeping him upright.

He ended up in the overgrown grass at the side of the driveway, still dizzy with adrenaline, staring up at the house’s dark windows as the sign swayed, creaking on its metal stand. It felt like someone had hollowed out everything behind his ribs and spilled it right there, in the dirt around his feet; as if, until that very moment it had never occurred to him that Nate was gone.

Folks in town had never really stopped talking about the murders; but at some point, around the beginning of September, with school getting back in session and the summer heat starting to leach away, the horror of it all had started to lose its edge. Nothing could or would change what had happened, and so the town was starting the natural process of forgetting.

But Blue wasn’t sure how to forget.

At school, it was easy to live moment to moment. No one talked to him - though sometimes he thought they talked _about_ him, pitching their voices down when he walked by, or staring at the back of his head until his scalp itched and his neck burned - and even the teachers seemed indifferent to his presence, as if the tangible part of his being had left him, and all that was left of Blue was an after-image, sometimes glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.

Working evenings was harder. Blue was alone at the pharmacy, from five to nine, most nights of the week, after the actual pharmacy counter had closed: mopping floors, and rearranging shelves of multi-vitamins, shampoos and antacids for six dollars an hour. Sometimes, he’d switch the radio to something he wanted to listen to, and spread whatever homework he had across the counter, but that night after the sign went up, he sat behind the counter on his crooked stool and picked at the paint on his name tag, wearing away the first dark L in _Llewellyn_ with the edge of a dirty fingernail, until the chime above the door rang, startling him. The uninhibited jolt of his arm sent his nametag skittering across the counter, tumbling onto the mat as Justin Abbott walked in.

He glanced at Blue as the door swung closed and though he didn’t smile, exactly, something lit up his dark eyes that made Blue’s insides twist together, like a mass of snakes, or worms that had pushed up from the earth after a rainstorm, to keep from drowning.

He watched Justin walk to the back of the store, not out of curiosity or caution, but because he felt frozen, as if his palms had been nailed to the countertop, as Justin selected a bottle of pop, then a chocolate bar. He stopped to pick up the name tag as he came to the front, sliding it across the counter until it bumped against Blue’s white fingertips.

“You dropped this,” Justin said, slow, confident. The marks of his fight with Nate had long-ago disappeared, though Blue thought he could still see them in the way the harsh, overhead lights cut across Justin’s cheekbones. Since the summer, he had grown a beard; maybe to go with his new job at the scrapyard. Grandad wanted Blue to work there too, to have a “man’s job” instead of standing behind a counter; but Blue had always begged off, insisting he couldn’t keep hours at the scrapyard and go to school.

Which was true, but not essentially _the truth._

Blue didn’t reach for the tag. Instead, he forced his clammy hands to take and scan the bottle of pop, and the chocolate bar; forced his strung-tight vocal cords to form the words, “Three dollars.”

Justin’s sun-chapped lips pulled into a slow smile. “You sure you don’t want to give it to me for free?”

“Three dollars,” Blue repeated. His heart straining in his chest.

“C’mon Llewellyn,” Justin drawled, stretching the name out until it sounded unreal, almost obscene. “Maybe we can trade, like we used to.”

For an instant, in between one blink and the next, Blue saw the glint of a novelty belt buckle, smelled the sour tang of rotten grass clippings. There was a place in his mind where Justin still towered over him, where Blue still remembered the patterns of spilled paint on the legs of his jeans.

Then the bell above the door chimed. Justin slapped a five dollar bill down on the countertop and walked out as Mrs. Hockley came up to the counter, looking half-undone and asking Blue if she had to wait until the pharmacy opened up in the morning to buy Children’s Tylenol.

Blue rode home an hour later, in the dark. He didn’t think consciously about going to Nate’s house - it was muscle memory. He’d always gone to Nate when he was upset about something, and he didn’t think about what he was doing until he pulled into the driveway and saw that all the windows were dark. He hit the brakes so hard that his tires bit the gravel, and sat there, sweating against the cold, catching his breath. A car spread by on the road, splashing the yard with the yellow from its headlights, but it didn’t stop. Everything seemed darker once it had passed; the house like a giant’s hunched shoulders, the old tree like a great, twisted hand.

Blue pushed his bike forward, further down the driveway until he was almost up against the front of the house. There, he abandoned it, lowering it into the uncut grass. A clunky grey lockbox hung from the front rail, but Blue found the spare key, still resting atop the doorframe. Inside, the house smelled of fresh paint, undercut by the sour, chemical tang of a powerful cleaner. Blue tried the light switch without much hope, and wasn’t all that surprised when nothing happened.

He had no idea what he was looking for as he wandered through the empty house, the sound of his footsteps heavy and deliberate on the hardwood floors. There was no trace of Nate or his family anywhere - just a few pieces of furniture that must have been too heavy to move, or simply not worth the effort: an over-sized china hutch in the dining room, the breakfast table in the kitchen, bookshelves in the living room. Blue felt his memories of the house falling away, like the edges of a sand castle crumbling as it dried.

Nate’s bedroom seemed the most empty, smaller somehow, without furniture in it. Blue found himself following the edges of the room, counting his footfalls, dragging his fingertips along the freshly painted walls, searching for something - for any trace of Nate: a loose hair, maybe; or the ghost of his scent.

But it was just an empty room.

Somewhere, in the attic above Blue’s head, something gave a low, decisive thump.

“Nate?”

His voice cut through the darkness like a jagged knife. As if in response, the sound came again. It was less like a heavy footstep than something falling; something with great weight and substance, but also a softness. Something made of flesh.

Blue ran. 

It wasn’t a conscious decision, just pure, animal panic that wrapped itself around his heart like a cold fist. He bolted down the stairwell in the dark, burst from the front door, missed the last step on the front porch, and fell, kissing the dirt, splitting his lower lip against his teeth with the force of the impact. He tasted copper, then iron, heard the air whistling between his teeth but never seeming to reach his lungs. He rolled over, forcing himself to sit up, and saw the front door standing open behind him, the darkness beyond like a great mouth, or the cave of an unseen beast. But nothing stepped out after him; nothing came to drag him back into that empty house, where someone had painted over the blood, and scrubbed it from the hardwood floors.

Blue got up, slowly, with blood running down his chin and grit caught in his teeth, and went to close the door. He felt a single, brief chill of fear as he reached inside and grabbed the cold doorknob in his throbbing, scraped-raw hand; but nothing reached for him, nothing leaned in close to breathe against his sweat-damp face.

Blue locked the door, but he put the key in his pocket.


End file.
